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Genetic algorithm
The next step is to generate a second generation population of solutions from those selected through genetic operators: crossover (also called recombination), and/or mutation. For each new solution to be produced, a pair of "parent" solutions is selected for breeding from the pool selected previously. By producing a "child" solution using the above methods of crossover and mutation, a new solution is created which typically shares many of the characteristics of its "parents". New parents are selected for each child, and the process continues until a new population of solutions of appropriate size is generated. These processes ultimately result in the next generation population of chromosomes that is different from the initial generation. Generally the average fitness will have increased by this procedure for the population, since only the best organisms from the first generation are selected for breeding, along with a small proportion of less fit solutions, for reasons already mentioned above. Termination This generational process is repeated until a termination condition has been reached. Common terminating conditions are * A solution is found that satisfies minimum criteria * Fixed number of generations reached * Allocated budget (computation time/money) reached * The highest ranking solution's fitness is reaching or has reached a plateau such that successive iterations no longer produce better results * Manual inspection * Combinations of the above Pseudo-code algorithm Choose initial population Repeat Evaluate the individual fitnesses of a certain proportion of the population Select pairs of best-ranking individuals to reproduce Breed new generation through crossover and mutation Until terminating condition Observations There are several general observations about the generation of solutions via a genetic algorithm: * In many problems with sufficient complexity, GAs may have a tendency to converge towards local optima rather than the global optimum of the problem. The likelihood of this occurring depends on the shape of the fitness landscape: certain problems may provide an easy ascent towards a global optimum, others may make it easier for the function to find the local optima. This problem may be alleviated by using a different fitness function, increasing the rate of mutation, or by using selection techniques that maintain a diverse population of solutions. * Operating on dynamic data sets is difficult, as genomes begin to converge early on towards solutions which may no longer be valid for later data. Several methods have been proposed to remedy this by increasing genetic diversity somehow and preventing early convergence, either by increasing the probability of mutation when the solution quality drops (called triggered hypermutation), or by occasionally introducing entirely new, randomly generated elements into the gene pool (called random immigrants). Recent research has also shown the benefits of using biological exaptation (or preadaptation) in solving this problem. * GAs cannot effectively solve problems in which the only fitness measure is right/wrong, as there is no way to converge on the solution. (No hill to climb). In these cases, a random search may find a solution as quickly as a GA. * Selection is clearly an important genetic operator, but opinion is divided over the importance of crossover versus mutation. Some argue that crossover is the most important, while mutation is only necessary to ensure that potential solutions are not lost. Others argue that crossover in a largely uniform population only serves to propagate innovations originally found by mutation, and in a non-uniform population crossover is nearly always equivalent to a very large mutation (which is likely to be catastrophic). * Often, GAs can rapidly locate good solutions, even for difficult search spaces. * For specific optimization problems and problem instantiations, simpler optimization algorithms may find better solutions than genetic algorithms (given the same amount of computation time). Alternative and complementary algorithms include simulated annealing, hill climbing, and particle swarm optimization. * As with all current machine learning problems it is worth tuning the parameters such as mutation probability, recombination probability and population size to find reasonable settings for the problem class being worked on. A very small mutation rate may lead to genetic drift (which is non-ergodic in nature) or premature convergence of the genetic algorithm in a local optimum. A mutation rate that is too high may lead to loss of good solutions. There are theoretical but not yet practical upper and lower bounds for these parameters that can help guide selection. * The implementation and evaluation of the fitness function is an important factor in the speed and efficiency of the algorithm. Variants The simplest algorithm represents each chromosome as a bit string. Typically, numeric parameters can be represented by integers, though it is possible to use floating point representations. The basic algorithm performs crossover and mutation at the bit level. Other variants treat the chromosome as a list of numbers which are indexes into an instruction table, nodes in a linked list, hashes, objects, or any other imaginable data structure. Crossover and mutation are performed so as to respect data element boundaries. For most data types, specific variation operators can be designed. Different chromosomal data types seem to work better or worse for different specific problem domains. When bit strings representations of integers are used, Gray coding is often employed. In this way, small changes in the integer can be readily effected through mutations or crossovers. This has been found to help prevent premature convergence at so called Hamming walls, in which too many simultaneous mutations (or crossover events) must occur in order to change the chromosome to a better solution. Other approaches involve using arrays of real-valued numbers instead of bit strings to represent chromosomes. Theoretically, the smaller the alphabet, the better the performance, but paradoxically, good results have been obtained from using real-valued chromosomes. A slight, but very successful variant of the general process of constructing a new population is to allow some of the better organisms from the current generation to carry over to the next, unaltered. This strategy is known as elitist selection. Parallel implementations of genetic algorithms come in two flavours. Coarse grained parallel genetic algorithms assume a population on each of the computer nodes and migration of individuals among the nodes. Fine grained parallel genetic algorithms assume an individual on each processor node which acts with neighboring individuals for selection and reproduction. Other variants, like genetic algorithms for online optimization problems, introduce time-dependence or noise in the fitness function. Problem domains Problems which appear to be particularly appropriate for solution by genetic algorithms include timetabling and scheduling problems, and many scheduling software packages are based on GAs. GAs have also been applied to engineering. Genetic algorithms are often applied as an approach to solve global optimization problems. As a general rule of thumb genetic algorithms might be useful in problem domains that have a complex fitness landscape as recombination is designed to move the population away from local optima that a traditional hill climbing algorithm might get stuck in. History Genetic algorithms originated from the studies of cellular automata, conducted by John Holland and his colleagues at the University of Michigan. Research in GAs remained largely theoretical until the mid-1980s, when The First International Conference on Genetic Algorithms was held at The University of Illinois. As academic interest grew, the dramatic increase in desktop computational power allowed for practical application of the new technique. In 1989, The New York Times writer John Markoff wrote about Evolver, the first commercially available desktop genetic algorithm. Custom computer applications began to emerge in a wide variety of fields, and these algorithms are now used by a majority of Fortune 500 companies to solve difficult scheduling, data fitting, trend spotting and budgeting problems, and virtually any other type of combinatorial optimization problem. Building block hypothesis 1989, page 41, talking of binary bit string genetic algorithms, says: :Short, low order, and highly fit schemata are sampled, recombined over, and resampled to form strings of potentially higher fitness. In a way, by working with these particular schemata building blocks, we have reduced the complexity of our problem; instead of building high-performance strings by trying every conceivable combination, we construct better and better strings from the best partial solutions of past samplings. :Just as a child creates magnificent fortresses through the arrangement of simple blocks of wood blocks, so does a genetic algorithm seek near optimal performance through the juxtaposition of short, low-order, high-performance schemata, or building blocks. Note 1989 suggests that building blocks are highly fit schemata with only a few defined bits (low order), and that these are close together (short). Applications * Artificial Creativity * Automated design, including research on composite material design and multi-objective design of automotive components for crashworthiness, weight savings, and other characteristics. * Automated design of mechatronic systems using bond graphs and genetic programming (NSF). * Automated design of industrial equipment using catalogs of exemplar lever patterns. * Calculation of Bound States and Local Density Approximations. * Chemical kinetics (gas and solid phases) * Configuration applications, particularly physics applications of optimal molecule configurations for particular systems like C60 (buckyballs). * Container loading optimization. * Code-breaking, using the GA to search large solution spaces of ciphers for the one correct decryption. * Design of water distribution systems. * Distributed computer network topologies. * Electronic circuit design, known as Evolvable hardware. * File allocation for a distributed system. * JGAP: Java Genetic Algorithms Package, also includes support for Genetic Programming * Parallelization of GAs/GPs including use of hierarchical decomposition of problem domains and design spaces nesting of irregular shapes using feature matching and GAs. * Game Theory Equilibrium Resolution. * Learning Robot behavior using Genetic Algorithms. * Learning fuzzy rule base using genetic algorithms. * Linguistic analysis, including Grammar Induction and other aspects of Natural Language Processing (NLP) such as word sense disambiguation. * Mobile communications infrastructure optimization. * Molecular Structure Optimization (Chemistry). * Multiple population topologies and interchange methodologies. * Optimisation of data compression systems, for example using wavelets. * Protein folding and protein/ligand docking. * Plant floor layout. * Scheduling applications, including job-shop scheduling. The objective being to schedule jobs in a sequence dependent or non-sequence dependent setup environment in order to maximize the volume of production while minimizing penalties such as tardiness. * Software engineering * Solving the machine-component grouping problem required for cellular manufacturing systems. * Tactical asset allocation and international equity strategies. * Timetabling problems, such as designing a non-conflicting class timetable for a large university. * Training artificial neural networks when pre-classified training examples are not readily obtainable (neuroevolution). * Traveling Salesman Problem. See also Evolution strategy References *Fentress, Sam W (2005), Exaptation as a means of evolving complex solutions, MA Thesis, University of Edinburgh. (pdf) *Goldberg, David E (1989), Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization and Machine Learning, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, MA. *Goldberg, David E (2002), The Design of Innovation: Lessons from and for Competent Genetic Algorithms, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. *Harvey, Inman (1992), Species Adaptation Genetic Algorithms: A basis for a continuing SAGA, in 'Toward a Practice of Autonomous Systems: Proceedings of the First European Conference on Artificial Life', F.J. Varela and P. Bourgine (eds.), MIT Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge, MA, pp. 346-354. *Holland, John H (1975), "Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems", University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor *Koza, John (1992), Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection *Matthews, Robert A J (1993), The use of genetic algorithms in cryptanalysis, Cryptologia vol 17 187-201 *Michalewicz, Zbigniew (1999), Genetic Algorithms + Data Structures = Evolution Programs, Springer-Verlag. *Mitchell, Melanie, (1996), An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. *Schmitt, Lothar M (2001), Theory of Genetic Algorithms, Theoretical Computer Science (259), pp. 1-61 *Schmitt, Lothar M (2004), Theory of Genetic Algorithms II: models for genetic operators over the string-tensor representation of populations and convergence to global optima for arbitrary fitness function under scaling, Theoretical Computer Science (310), pp. 181-231 *Vose, Michael D (1999), The Simple Genetic Algorithm: Foundations and Theory, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. *Whitley, D. (1994). A genetic algorithm tutorial. Statistics and Computing 4, 65–85. External links *JAGA - Extensible and pluggable open source API for implementing genetic algorithms and genetic programming applications in Java * A Fast TSP Solver using a genetic algorithm Very fast TSP solver that uses aditional heuristics for faster operation. * Applying Genetic Algorithms to Multi-objective Land-Use Planning within the scope of Land Allocation Decision Support System, Keith Matthews. * C# implementation of a genetic algorithm to route network traffic, Lawrence Botley. * Follow-the-wall Robot - An interactive applet that allows you to experiment with genetic algorithms. * http://cs.felk.cvut.cz/~xobitko/ga/ - An online introduction to genetic algorithms with Java applets * IlliGAL - Illinois Genetic Algorithms Laboratory - Download technical reports and code * KanGAL - Kanpur Genetic Algorithms Laboratory at IIT Kanpur - Download technical reports and code * HeuristicLab - A free .NET environment for heuristic optimization (Genetic Algorithms, Genetic Programming, Evolution Strategies, Simulated Annealing, Tabu Search, etc.) * Golem Project - Automatic Design and Manufacture of Robotic Lifeforms * Introduction to Genetic Algorithms Using RPL2 * Talk.Origins FAQ on the uses of genetic algorithms, by Adam Marczyk * Genetic algorithm in search and optimization, by Richard Baker * Differential Evolution using Genetic Algorithm * Introduction to Genetic Algorithms and Neural Networks including an example windows program * Genetic Algorithm Solves the Toads and Frogs Puzzle at cut-the-knot * MIT OpenCourseWare | Health Sciences and Technology | HST.508 Genomics and Computational Biology, Fall 2002 | Lecture Notes *A Genetic Algorithm Tutorial by Darrell Whitley Computer Science Department Colorado State University An excellent tutorial with lots of theory *Evolutionary computing in search-based software engineering. Leo Rela. How evolutionary computing (specifically GA) is used in software engineering. *Genetic Algorithm Applet A Java Applet that allows you to experiment with genetic algorithms. Source code included. *Trainable Mechanical Arm Physical simulation of a mechanical arm and a ball. Using genetic algorithms it learns how to perform a given exercise (e.g. throw the ball as far as possible). *A video showing a 20 generation evolution of a natural walking legs model *VisualBots - Freeware multi-agent simulator in Microsoft Excel. Sample programs include genetic algorithm, ACO, and simulated annealing solutions to TSP. *Genetics Studio - Freeware numeric genetic algorithm utility for the novice to advanced user. *GA for Excel - Freeware GA application for constrained problems in MS Excel worksheets. *PIKAIA- a free genetic algorithm subroutine developed in Fortran. PIKAIA is also available in an Excel/VBA version and a parallel processing version. *DGPF - The Distributed Genetic Programming Framework provides a multi-objective Genetic Algorithm library with many distribution abilities: client/server, p2p, hybrid. *Introduction and Fortran Code - This document will serve as an introduction to genetic algorithms. There are numerous empirical tests that demonstrate the importance of the GA operators selection,crossover and mutation. Category:Cybernetics Category:Genetic algorithms Category:Optimization algorithms Category:Evolutionary algorithms ar:خوارزميات وراثية ca:Algorisme genètic cs:Genetický algoritmus da:Genetisk algoritme de:Genetischer Algorithmus es:Algoritmo genético fa:الگوریتم ژنتیک fr:Algorithme génétique gl:Algoritmo xenético id:Algoritma Genetik it:Algoritmo genetico he:אלגוריתמים גנטיים lt:Genetiniai algoritmai nl:Genetisch algoritme ja:遺伝的アルゴリズム pl:Algorytm genetyczny pt:Algoritmo genético ru:Генетический алгоритм th:ขั้นตอนวิธีเชิงพันธุกรรม vi:Giải thuật di truyền zh:遗传算法